They tied him to the pole on the execution platform and stripped him naked.
Tian watched the crowd. In the eyes of some, he saw pity, in others, he saw fear, and in still others, like Li Xiaoyi’s cousin Jie, he saw delight at seeing the hooligan songgun meet this fate. But most were expectant. This execution, this horror, was entertainment.
“One last chance,” ?the Blood Drop said. “If you confess the truth now, we will slit your throat cleanly. Otherwise, you can enjoy the next few hours.”
Whispers passed through the crowd. Some tittered. Tian gazed at the bloodlust in some of the men. You have become a slavish people, he thought. You have forgotten the past and become docile captives of the Emperor. ?You have learned to take delight in his barbarity, to believe that you live in a golden age, never bothering to look beneath the gilded surface of the Empire at its rotten, bloody foundation. ?You desecrate the very memory of those who died to keep you free.
His heart was filled with despair. Have I endured all this and thrown away my life for nothing?
Some children in the crowd began to sing:
The Tree of Dem herded dozens of Cap Tea
Like dogs and sheep.
If any Cap Tea walked too slow, the Wood Beet
Hmm’d immediately.
Or else a quill, slim on the dot.
The ?Why-Men were strong to gather wits & loupes
Like a strand of pearls.
The Blood Drop’s expression did not change. He heard nothing but the nonsense of children. True, this way, the children would not be endangered by knowing the song. But Tian also wondered if anyone would ever see through the nonsense. Had he hidden the truth too deep?
“Stubborn till the last, eh?” ?The Blood Drop turned to the executioner, who was sharpening his knives on the grindstone. “Make it last as long as possible.”
What have I done? thought Tian. They’re laughing at the way I’m dying, the way I’ve been a fool. I’ve accomplished nothing except fighting for a hopeless cause.
Not at all, said the Monkey King. Li Xiaojing is safe in Japan, and the children’s songs will be passed on until the whole county, the whole province, the whole country fills with their voices. Someday, perhaps not now, perhaps not in another hundred years, but someday the book will come back from Japan, or a clever scholar will finally see through the disguise in your songs as Lord Erlang finally saw through mine. And then the spark of truth will set this country aflame, and this people will awaken from their torpor. ?You have preserved the memories of the men and women of Yangzhou.
The executioner began with a long, slow cut across Tian’s thighs, removing chunks of flesh. Tian’s scream was like that of an animal’s, raw, pitiful, incoherent.
Not much of a hero, am I? thought Tian. I wish I were truly brave.
You’re an ordinary man who was given an extraordinary choice, said the Monkey King. Do you regret your choice?
No, thought Tian. And as the pain made him delirious and reason began to desert him, he shook his head firmly. Not at all.
You can’t ask for more than that, said the Monkey King. And he bowed before Tian Haoli, not the way you kowtowed to an Emperor, but the way you would bow to a great hero.
? ? ?
AUTHOR’S NOTES: For more about the historical profession of songshi (or songgun), please contact the author for an unpublished paper. Some of ??Tian Haoli’s exploits are based on folktales about the great Litigation Master Xie Fangzun collected by the anthologist Ping Heng in Zhongguo da zhuangshi (“Great Plaintmasters of China”), published in 1922.
For more than 250 years, An Account of ??Ten Days at Yangzhou was suppressed in China by the Manchu emperors, and the Yangzhou Massacre, along with numerous other atrocities during the Manchu Conquest, was forgotten. It wasn’t until the decade before the Revolution of 1911 that copies of the book were brought back from Japan and republished in China. The text played a small, but important, role in the fall of the Qing and the end of Imperial rule in China. I translated the excerpts used in this story.
Due to the long suppression, which continues to some degree to this day, the true number of victims who died in Yangzhou may never be known. This story is dedicated to their memory.
THE MAN WHO ENDED HISTORY: A DOCUMENTARY
Akemi Kirino, Chief Scientist, Feynman Laboratories:
[Dr. Kirino is in her early forties. She has the kind of beauty that doesn’t require much makeup. If you look closely, you can see bits of white in her otherwise black hair.]
Every night, when you stand outside and gaze upon the stars, you are bathing in time as well as light.
For example, when you look at this star in the constellation Libra called Gliese 581, you are really seeing it as it was just over two decades ago because it’s about twenty light-years from us. And conversely, if someone around Gliese 581 had a powerful enough telescope pointed to around here right now, they’d be able to see Evan and me walking around Harvard? Yard, back when we were graduate students.
[She points to Massachusetts on the globe on her desk, as the camera pans to zoom in on it. She pauses, thinking over her words. The camera pulls back, moving us farther and farther away from the globe, as though we are flying away from it.]
The best telescopes we have today can see as far back as about thirteen billion years ago. If you strap one of those to a rocket moving away from the Earth at a speed that’s faster than light—a detail that I’ll get to in a minute—and point the telescope back at the Earth, you’ll see the history of humanity unfold before you in reverse. The view of everything that has happened on Earth leaves here in an ever-expanding sphere of light. And you only have to control how far away you travel in space to determine how far back you’ll go in time.
[The camera keeps on pulling back, through the door of her office, down the hall, as the globe and Dr. Kirino become smaller and smaller in our view. The long hallway we are backing down is dark, and in that sea of darkness, the open door of the office becomes a rectangle of bright light framing the globe and the woman.]
Somewhere about here you’ll witness Prince Charles’s sad face as Hong Kong is finally returned to China. Somewhere about here you’ll see Japan’s surrender aboard the USS Missouri. Somewhere about here you’ll see Hideyoshi’s troops set foot on the soil of Korea for the first time. And somewhere about here you’ll see Lady Murasaki completing the first chapter of the Tale of Genji. If you keep on going, you can go back to the beginning of civilization and beyond.
But the past is consumed even as it is seen. The photons enter the lens, and from there they strike an imaging surface, be it your retina or a sheet of film or a digital sensor, and then they are gone, stopped dead in their paths. If you look but don’t pay attention and miss a moment, you cannot travel farther out to catch it again. That moment is erased from the universe, forever.
[From the shadows next to the door to the office an arm reaches out to slam the door shut. Darkness swallows Dr. Kirino, the globe, and the bright rectangle of light. The screen stays black for a few seconds before the opening credits roll.]
Remembrance Films HK Ltd.
in association with
Yurushi Studios
presents
a Heraclitus Twice Production
THE MAN WHO ENDED HISTORY
This film has been banned by the Ministry of Culture of the People’s Republic of China and is released under strong protest from the government of Japan
Akemi Kirino:
[We are back in the warm glow of her office.]